IN 1960, the owner of the 1905 Gorham Building at Fifth Avenue and 36th Street, which was designed by Stanford White, ordered his architect to rip out delicate arches and carved relief figures as part of a redesign. Now a new owner of the building, which was declared a landmark in 1998, would like to restore the lost architecture -- but with paint, not with stone.

The proposal, which is before the Landmarks Preservation Commission, has made some preservation groups wary. But the owner says he is eager to work with them to gain approval.

The Gorham Company was founded in 1831 in Providence, R.I., and by the end of the 1850's it was a leading American silver concern.

In the 1870's Edward Holbrook joined the company as its New York agent, and in 1884 it built the unusual Queen Anne-style building that still stands at the northwest corner 19th Street and Broadway, with showrooms below and bachelor apartments above.

In 1894 Holbrook became Gorham's president. He tried to keep up with the more prominent Tiffany & Company by buying up other silver concerns. Charles H. Carpenter Jr., author of ''Gorham Silver'' (Alan Wofsy Fine Arts: 1997) called Holbrook the John D. Rockefeller of the silver industry. Holbrook expanded the company's output of handmade silverware, rivaling Tiffany's stature in the field, and hired the adventurous designer William C. Codman, who began producing flowing Art Nouveau pieces.

At the same time, Gorham's Union Square neighborhood was filling up with factories and lofts. In 1903 both Gorham and Tiffany -- which had been on Union Square -- began work on new buildings on Fifth Avenue, Tiffany at the southeast corner of 37th Street and Gorham at the southwest corner of 36th.

In September 1905 the two companies opened their new buildings within days of each other. Both were designed by Stanford White, but in very different modes. Tiffany's (which still stands) was rich and heavily modeled, patterned after the 16th-century Palazzo Grimani in Venice. The new Gorham Building was more restrained but just as elegant, following general sources of the Florentine renaissance.

''Compared to the Gorham Building, the Tiffany Building is by way of being frivolous,'' Architectural Record said in 1907.

Gorham's eight-story facade is of white limestone and granite, originally heavily trimmed with Gorham-made bronze at the ground and upper floors. The New York Tribune said the bronze was one-tenth of the cost of the $1.25 million building.

Its deep copper cornice apparently had painted details, with additional gold leafing, but what made people stop and stare were the relief sculptures of allegorical silvermaking scenes by the sculptor Andrew O'Connor, above the arches on both faces of the structure. The main selling floor was a high vaulted space dominated by massive banded columns of granite flecked with gold.

DURING Holbrook's presidency, Gorham continued to prosper. Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, whose husband, Harry, shot and killed Stanford White, Nesbit's former lover, in 1906 in a jealous rage, purchased more than $2,000 in silver on credit in the same year and gave it away as presents. When Gorham sued her for payment in 1913, she said she had less than $250 to her name.

Gorham moved out of its building in the early 1920's, to 576 Fifth Avenue, and was succeeded by Russek's, a women's clothing store. Russek's made few changes, but in 1960 a new owner, Spear Securities, converted the structure to showroom space and wanted a new look at the street floor.

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Now the current owner, 390 Fifth Avenue L.L.C., is planning a restoration -- of sorts. Robert Schwalbe, a principal in the group, said that his family has owned the building since the 1970's and recently has upgraded the halls, elevators and lobby. ''We decided that if the interior looks good, we should make the exterior look good,'' Mr. Schwalbe said.

He said that he and his partners first explored a full-scale return to the original architecture but that the budget was $7 million, far more than they could justify.

''So we really did the next best thing,'' he said. Inspired by a trip he made to Paris where he saw extensive trompe l'oeil, Mr. Schwalbe retained the architect Eric Cohler and a decorative painter, Andrew Tedesco, to recreate the missing Stanford White elements, the relief sculpture on the entire facade and the arches on the Fifth Avenue front.

Mr. Schwalbe said that he was not certain of the cost of the painting, but that ''it's sure going to be a fraction of a real restoration.''

Mr. Tedesco said that people were at first skeptical -- ''the community board said, 'You want to do what?' '' But in July, Community Board No. 5 backed the plan by a vote of 29 to 0, with one abstention.

Mr. Tedesco is planning to paint 80 sheets of 4-by-8-foot outdoor signboard, using outdoor latex paint, which he said should last about 10 years. These would be installed using Mr. Tannenbaum's 1960 metal grid as a base. The proposal went before the landmarks commission in August. Terri Rosen Deutsch, a commission spokeswoman, said that it had asked the owner for more information and that it was hard to determine when a decision would be rendered.

Three preservation groups that regularly monitor hearings said they were somewhat concerned. The Historic Districts Council said in a statement that although the design would be ''acceptable, even amusing on a construction fence,'' the owner should develop a master plan for a true restoration, to be done a bit at a time.

Roger Lang, a spokesman for the New York Landmarks Conservancy, praised what he called ''a sincere proposal to heal a scar'' but called for the project to be treated as a temporary improvement, ''with a sunset provision for the removal or reauthorization'' of the mural.

Frank E. Sanchis, director of the Municipal Art Society, said the organization had not yet taken a position. But he said he personally was concerned about using trompe l'oeil as a shortcut to real preservation work.

He said he liked the idea ''if it's a step in the eventual restoration of the building.'' The 1960 Tannenbaum design, he said, looks as if ''it's chopped off at the knees -- I'd rather look at a painting of what the base of the building was than what's there now.''

Jason Schwalbe, a cousin of Robert Schwalbe who is also involved with the building, said that the owners are responding to questions from all sides and are reconciling the mural with store signage. He said he was hopeful that Mr. Tedesco's mural would be approved.

''We're eager to listen to input from people with greater expertise,'' he said.

Correction: October 29, 2000

The Streetscapes column last Sunday, about facade work on the Gorham Building, at Fifth Avenue and 36th Street, misstated the professional qualifications of Eric Cohler, who is involved. He is a historic preservation consultant, not an architect.

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A version of this article appears in print on October 22, 2000, on Page 11011007 of the National edition with the headline: Streetscapes/The 1905 Gorham Building, at Fifth Avenue and 36th Street; Recreating a Stanford White Design -- Using Paint. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe